The Four VDI Suite Offerings

Four Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Suites include the right to use Windows Server 2008 R2’s Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to map each VDI user’s connection request to the appropriate virtual machine (VM), as well as the right to use three System Center products—Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Configuration Manager (Config Mngr in the illustration), and Operations Manager (Ops Mngr)—to manage a VDI deployment.

The two packages that do not include the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)—VDI Standard Suite (US$12 per device per year) and VDI Premium Suite (US$44 per device per year)—are intended for customers who have already purchased MDOP subscriptions. The two “with MDOP” packages—VDI Standard Suite with MDOP (US$21 per device per year) and VDI Premium Suite with MDOP (US$53 per device per year)—are useful to customers who haven’t purchased MDOP separately. MDOP includes two tools especially useful for VDI—Application Virtualization (App-V) for application deployment and Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) for configuration control—as well as other utilities, including Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (which Microsoft calls MED-V), Asset Inventory Service (AIS), Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART), and Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM). A MDOP subscription, whether purchased on its own or as part of VDI Standard Suite with MDOP, includes the right to use App-V for deploying applications onto desktops and desktop VMs.